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Rear Window

Like his earlier (but less successful) Rope, this masterpiece from director Alfred Hitchcock began as a technical stunt: Hitchcock wondered if he could make a film on just a single set and from just one vantage point. James Stewart plays a photojournalist with a broken leg and a high-society girlfriend, Grace Kelly. Confined to his apartment, he whiles away the time gazing out of the window through his telephoto lens and becomes convinced that a neighbour opposite (Raymond Burr) has murdered his wife and chopped her into disposable pieces. Hitchcock's "stunt" became a classic study of voyeurism - all those windows, shaped like movie screens, each containing a mini-drama of its own - and the tension builds brilliantly, complemented perfectly by the sexy repartee between the immobile Stewart and the slinky Kelly, and the dry, cynical humour provided by Thelma Ritter as Stewart's nurse. Often imitated, this extraordinary achievement has never been equalled.

Plot Summary

Classic thriller starring James Stewart and Grace Kelly. Confined to a wheelchair following an accident, magazine photographer Jeff Jeffries passes the time by observing the behaviour of his neighbours. One in particular catches his attention: Thorwald, a salesman he sees leaving the flat with a suitcase, and whose invalid wife has seemingly disappeared. Convinced something terrible has happened to Mrs Thorwald, Jeff and his girlfriend Lisa decide to investigate, putting themselves in deadly danger.